


In Filth and Splendor

by madeinessos



Series: Author's Favourites [2]
Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Erik Killmonger Lives, Erik Killmonger Wins, F/F, Female T'Cherik, Unhealthy Relationships, past T'Challa/Nakia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-17 11:41:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14188152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeinessos/pseuds/madeinessos
Summary: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. T'Challa thinks that is what her cousin the new queen is doing.





	1. Chapter 1

> _My beloved has already been_
> 
> _with me **in filth and splendor.**_
> 
> _But never like now: naked as a star at night._
> 
> _The radiant one entwines me snakelike_
> 
> _and whispers: Come into me._
> 
> _You shall be with me in paradise._
> 
> -  **Michael Guttenbrunner** , tr. by Beth Bjorklund, from Ungereimte Gedichte; “ _Snake Star"_

*

T’Challa is pressed hard against the ground.

The Panther Habit begins to melt back from her face like the peeling of raw, newly grown skin. And, all at once, blood startles her tongue, yells numb her ears. Smoke scratches at her eyes. T’Challa wheezes, and it makes pained tears squeeze out of the corners of her eyes.

Smoke, blood, tears. Baba lifeless amongst shards of glass. T’Challa despairing, and scrabbling for something to hold on to.

The grip on her nape tightens even more. Grass and soil scrape half her face.

“Yield,” Killmonger demands. “Yield the fuck now.”

Killmonger’s voice rings throughout the battle. A hush ripples. The clash of armour and weapons, the pained yells, the rampaging rhinoceroses all fade. Killmonger’s voice is doubly loud now, as if it were itself another presence taking up space.

“Yield!” rings Killmonger’s voice, and T’Challa’s face is once again sharply dug against the ground. Her cousin’s voice is raspy, like smoke dragging over shards of glass. With an accent curling around the word in a way nobody’s in Wakanda will have done, when demanding of such a thing. When demanding of such a thing from T’Challa.

T’Challa tries to raise her arm. It’s grabbed. Twisted. The knee on her back digs in with a force which almost makes her cry out.

“Want to see if you’ll die this time?”

No.

No. Mistakes. Shuri. Mother.

T’Challa coils her muscles. She tries to buck up again with only one good leg. But Killmonger really twists at her arm now, yanking upward at an angle, blunt, relentless, until a wet snap sounds and T’Challa screams.

A broken arm.

For a blinding pain-filled moment, T’Challa almost wishes they were at the Warrior Falls again. The rushing waters almost soothed her the last time.

Dimly, she thinks she can hear Nakia’s shout.

She gasps out, bites off a whimper.

 _Think_ , T’Challa orders herself.

A molten pain is lancing up and down her entire body. Even breathing is an agony.

“I can kill you right now,” Killmonger says.

_Yes, why does she not just kill me?_

“I can make a present out of you,” Killmonger continues. Her various holds on T’Challa remain unyielding. “Your sis, she’s lonely. Been locked in her room all day. She misses you. Didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye, she said. You miss her too?”

The smoke in T’Challa’s eyes has turned watery. It stings. “Don’t.”

“What was that?”

T’Challa snarls. She’s seized with the urge to pull back a fist and punch. But she cannot even raise her face from the ground.

The clawed grip on T’Challa’s nape loosens before swiftly tightening again, almost a mocking caress. “She wants to see you. I can give her that. Didn’t say you have to be alive, though.”

And T’Challa is down here once again. Despairing. Scrabbling for something to hold on to.

 _Think_ , T’Challa orders herself, even though breathing itself feels like burning.

Shuri in the palace.

Mother up in the mountains.

_Why does she not just kill me? Like the last time?_

Her mouth is full of ash and blood. T’Challa chokes out the words.

*

Her cousin stands in front of a full-length gilded mirror. The chamber is awash with morning light, pouring in from the stained vibranium windows in soft yellows and soft pinks, shimmering on the numerous golden pearls embroidered on Killmonger’s black robe, on her golden Panther necklace.

The soft morning light also brushes on Killmonger’s face. In any other circumstance T’Challa might have thought it a beautiful face: a charm-laced smile, cheekiness tucked deep in her dimples, an eyebrow arched in a seemingly perpetual vague amusement. A face whose curves and planes brim with something almost like astonishing loveliness.

Then T’Challa will meet Killmonger’s eyes, and she will be sent reeling. Too sharp eyes. Much too sharp, and too hard.

Killmonger meets her eyes in the mirror now. Her cousin’s face looks almost kind as she says, “Come here.”

T’Challa moves away from the corner with the potted bamboo plant, where she has been watching Killmonger dress herself.

Her cousin refuses to have anyone dress her. Killmonger sent away the ladies whose tasks require them to assist the queen with her robes and shoes, with her hair and jewellery.

“Tug them for me.” Killmonger gestures to the strings at the back of her robe.

Each string has a pearl at its tip. T’Challa carefully pulls until her cousin’s robe takes on a shapely silhouette.

“Right, you can stop.”

It is still looser than how T’Challa might have worn it, even though it is elegantly shaped enough. But she stops, ties the strings into a droopy bow, and steps back.

Killmonger tilts her head and surveys the hair braided back to her nape. What she sees must have satisfied her. She moves to the lacquered jewellery case, runs her hand over the gems and gold. Then, without choosing anything, Killmonger snaps shut the case, rattling it.

T’Challa makes herself say, “Shall I send for another case, my queen?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“I beg your pard –”

“Queen,” Killmonger says, a bit impatiently. “Don’t call me queen.”

But her cousin is the queen. T’Challa is confused. She challenged T’Challa for the title, killed Zuri in the process, and now she refuses to be called queen just as she refused the queen’s ladies?

Just beneath T’Challa’s confusion, the anger stirs. The taste of ash and blood resurfaces in her mouth.

“You’ll address me as Your Highness,” continues Killmonger. She is untangling Prince N’Jobu’s royal ring from the necklace. “To be honest – King’s better. When you hear queen, you don’t know if she’s a consort or if she’s ruling in her own right. With King you know in that instant. You know at once that no one’s above the king.”

“But we still know,” T’Challa says. “When I was the queen, we –”

Killmonger pins her with sharp, hard eyes.

With effort, T’Challa bites back the argument in her. She wants to explain that their people still knew that T’Challa was their ruler and protector. There have been numerous individuals who succeeded in the offices of both ruler and protector, but her people knew that at that moment it was T’Challa herself, not some faceless and nameless queen and Black Panther. There was only one Queen T’Challa, the Black Panther. She was not only the queen and the Black Panther to her people, but also T’Challa of the Golden Tribe, eldest and heir of King T’Chaka, someone they could petition to and talk to, someone they often saw rambling through the market stalls and through the border farms, someone who enjoyed coconut rice pancakes from a terrace café in the city as a small girl. They all knew that. Her people know her.

But T’Challa holds back her tongue and her anger. She clasps her hands behind her back, her nails digging into her flesh.

“Hands where I can see them.”

T’Challa stares at her cousin in disbelief.

Killmonger slips her father’s royal ring on her left middle finger. “That’s an order, Princess T’Challa.”

“Am I your hostage, then?” It is not any less than what she expects.

T’Challa immediately thought of it when she woke up yesterday. She opened her eyes, free of any pain, and the first thing she saw was Killmonger’s face peering down at her, surrounded by the familiar sight of Shuri’s lab. It was terribly jarring. Shuri was nowhere in sight. But Killmonger showed her the footage of Shuri healing T’Challa in that very same lab, and afterwards of the priestess entering to strip her of the powers of the Black Panther.

“Where is my sister?” was the first thing T’Challa asked.

“She’s fine. Don’t ask that question again, and I’ll let you see her.”

Now her cousin prowls towards her, face suddenly cold and blank. Killmonger only stops when she is crowding into T’Challa’s space, but T’Challa stands her ground. Even if she tried anything she will be too slow against her cousin’s herb-enhanced reflexes, but by Bast, T’Challa refuses to be cowed by Killmonger.

“D’you want to be a prisoner?” Killmonger asks. “Cause I could’ve locked you up, thrown you in the middle of nowhere. Or I could’ve made sure you’re finished this time. Sound preferable to you?”

T’Challa carefully swallows. “No.”

“‘Course not.” Her cousin’s face suddenly ripples into a sort of casualness, lips smirking crookedly. T’Challa ought to be relieved, but she is only disturbed.

Killmonger is still crowding her. Her cousin looks her over, head to toe, and tugs at the crushed-silk sleeve of T’Challa’s purple robe. “I’m honouring you as a member of the family, ain’t I? In fact, I’m making you my cup-bearer.”

For a moment T’Challa finds that she has no words.

The vague amusement settles back on Killmonger’s face, so T’Challa musters all her courtly manners and grits out, “Your Highness is most gracious.”

“So what do you say?”

“Beg pardon?”

“Not that. God.” Killmonger laughs lightly. She is too close. A hint of genuine laughter gleams in her sharp, hard eyes. “I let you live. I let you keep your title of princess. I let you dress in fancy clothes, and I let you near me. I appoint you as my cupbearer.” She pauses, and her smile looks almost kind. “I will even let you see your baby sis.”

Unbidden, T’Challa remembers that night street in Busan. The wreckage of Klaue’s car. Klaue’s theatrical pleas for mercy, and T’Challa herself spitting out, “Every breath you take is a mercy from me.”

“So what do you say?” asks Killmonger.

No, she cannot possibly say it. T’Challa feels her lips tightening into a flat line. The anger in her is stirring again. T'Challa felt a crushing sorrow and something close to pity when she stood before Killmonger at the Warrior Falls. But now they dull at the face of disbelief and her stirring anger.

 _Live_ , a voice at the back of her mind wildly says. _You have to live._ It sounds like her own voice from the ancestral plane, when she shouted at Baba and their ancestors. Bast help her.

And T’Challa remembers scrabbling for something to hold on to: mistakes she has to rectify; Shuri who was reportedly seized after T’Challa’s defeat at the Warrior Falls and whom she might see again; Mother, who trekked all the way to the Jabariland and whose face was the first one T’Challa saw when she woke up buried in ice. And Nakia, who plucked the heart-shaped herb and managed to escape with Mother and who is now on some vague assignment by Killmonger.

T’Challa’s lips are so dry. “Your Highness have my thanks.”

“Do I?” Killmonger raises her brows expectantly. “Really?”

By Bast, she really wants to hear it.

“Yes, Your Highness.” T’Challa quickly licks her lips. “Thank you.”

Killmonger finally moves away from her, and heads for the double doors. T’Challa falls into a step behind her cousin’s right elbow.

It is only when they are nearing the dining hall does T’Challa realise that her cousin has not sent for another jewellery case. For her first luncheon with the council as ruler and protector, Killmonger is wearing no other jewellery except for the Panther necklace and the royal ring.

*

T’Challa politely listens as Negasi, the River Tribe Elder, expounds on the bottle of wine he has brought.

They are sat around the carved dining table, T’Challa next to her cousin, and all the councilors, and Okoye at the spot farthest from T’Challa. The pepper soup has just been cleared away. In the wait for the main course Negasi offered to pour for the queen, but Killmonger declined with a small smile, saying that cantaloupe is not her preference.

“Ah, but Your Highness,” Negasi said, with his courtly smile, “this wine is thick with many other flavours. This is our tribe’s prime quality liquor, and best paired with seafood.”

T’Challa expected a cold reply to end the discussion, for her cousin to declare with finality that nobody should ever offer her cantaloupe wine again when she already said that she dislikes it.

But Killmonger only thoughtfully tapped on the table, and said, “Tell me about this wine. What do you trade it with?”

It has been two minutes now. Negasi is going on about the full-bodied wine, with its flavours of cantaloupe and white peach and yellow apple and jasmine. The main course arrives when he starts on the economics of it.

“All right,” Killmonger says. “Sounds like a very interesting wine. You’ve convinced me. Very convincing.”

She shifts her small smile from Negasi to T’Challa. T’Challa tenses her muscles.

“Can’t decline again when Elder Negasi’s been very insistent, now can I? Princess T’Challa, pour for me.”

There is a pause around the table.

T’Challa meets Okoye’s wide eyes from across the table.

Then Negasi hands the bottle to a steward, who uncorks it before respectfully handing it over to T’Challa.

“I’ve made the princess my cup-bearer,” Killmonger explains as T’Challa pours. “She yielded. And I can be kind to family.”

“Your Highness is most gracious,” T’Challa hears W’Kabi say. She keeps her eyes on the pale amber wine pouring into Killmonger’s cup.

T’Challa takes the crystal cup in both hands and keeps her eyes lowered to it, the respectful way, and offers it to the queen.

There are three heartbeats during which T’Challa holds the cup aloft.

The silence around the table begins to thicken. T’Challa raises her eyes.

Killmonger still does not take the cup.

“I only just realised,” says the queen, “I’ve only known you for, what, two days, Princess. I mean I’ve known of you, but we’ve just met.” She looks around the table with that small smile. “I need to be able to trust my cup-bearer.”

Killmonger then dips two of her fingers into the cup.

T’Challa does not have the time to be incredulous. Before she can blink those fingers are pressed against her lips. T’Challa’s mind blanks. She stares at her cousin, who looks back at her with those sharp hard eyes and says, “Open your mouth.”

The cup is still held aloft.

T’Challa is still grappling with her mind blanking, when Killmonger murmurs “Hands where I can see them,” and then her fingers are sliding past T’Challa’s lips. They drag against T’Challa’s tongue, callused and coated with wine, slowly but firmly, relentless, until they reach the back of her throat and T’Challa can feel the cold metal of the royal ring nudging her upper lip and she is desperately swallowing to save herself from choking.

When T’Challa blinks next, the corners of her eyes are stinging and Killmonger is wiping her fingers on her napkin.

The silence around the table swells. It swells and swells and begins to smother, as unpleasantly heavy as wet woolens.

Okoye’s voice breaks through it. “I think it is safe to assume that the wine is safe, Your Highness. No one is attempting to poison you.”

Killmonger takes the cup from T’Challa’s numb hands. “Can’t be too sure,” she says, and with a cold and blank expression towards Okoye, adds: “I mean, you pointed your spear against me just days ago, General. At the soonest acceptable opportunity.”

Without waiting for reactions the queen curves her lips into a wider smile, a dimpled smile for the council, before asking for the steward to clear away T’Challa’s plate, cup, and cutlery.

“As I said we barely know each other,” Killmonger tells them. “This is good trust-building activity, here. We’ll share food and drink. I’m inviting my cousin to share my plate and fork.”

The numbness is fading from T’Challa’s hands. It is swiftly replaced with a coldness at her fingertips, then a faint tremor, as T’Challa tamps down on her anger and meets Killmonger’s expectant – demanding – gaze. Her lips are so dry they might crack, and the taste of wine is fast crumbling before her tongue’s memory of ash and blood. “Thank you, Your Highness.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Taking advantage of an assignment-free week and writing an update. :D

T’Challa knows that she is dreaming. She has slipped into that consciousness before wakefulness, murky and grey, but with bursts and streaks of colour. Images swim by, most of them more memory than dream.

In her dream, she is with Nakia.

They are together, like they were years ago.

They are younger, too.

*

“T’Challa, T’Challa,” hummed Nakia, in that sing-song tone she always used when she was being playful, “how are you so beautiful?”

T’Challa laughed, soupy and sated. “What do you mean, how?”

The sheets were damp beneath her. Even the pillow smelled of spilled sweat and perfume. T’Challa knew that she should get up, to wash away the dampness at the back of her knees, the dampness on her nape and scalp and between her breasts, and the other kind thick between her thighs.

She should also get up because she should have been getting ready. Tomorrow, T’Challa would fly with Baba to her first overseas summit.

A few more minutes, T’Challa told herself. She curled her toes. Languidly, T’Challa stretched.

Nakia was the one laughing now. She raised herself on one arm from where she had been sprawled on top of T’Challa. “Look at you. A pleased, pretty princess.” Her thumb on T’Challa’s cheekbone was gentle. It was a delicious contrast to how her thighs had been trying not to squash T’Challa’s cheeks earlier, as Nakia rode her mouth. “Such a symmetrical face, too. Impossibly symmetrical. I don’t think the figures exist in our mathematics books. Bast took her time with you, no?”

“What are you talking about, Nakia?” T’Challa couldn’t help it, she knew she had a stupid grin on her face. “You are – you look like you are –”

“Yes?”

T’Challa cast around for something good to say. Something to capture what she felt. “Moonlight stirring and tugging the waves. You are moonlight personified,” she said, lamely, “moving the sea.” T’Challa paused, swallowed. “You are so beautiful.”

But Nakia was smiling softly. “That is the loveliest thing. Thank you, darling.” Then she grinned, the playfulness back. “So if I am the moon, it’s time to say that your eyes are so gorgeous they look like stars.”

They started giggling madly.

Nakia slumped back on the bed beside T’Challa. T’Challa kissed her on the nose. It had always been all right if T’Challa sometimes embarrassed herself with Nakia; not for long it would feel like she should not have been embarrassed after all. They had always been good friends before they started dating.

T’Challa did not say anything for several moments. Being with Nakia had always rendered her awestruck.

When she and Nakia had started attending the same political science lectures, T’Challa had immediately admired Nakia’s hectoring and funny contributions in class. Nakia had boundless curiosity. She had always wanted to go to field trips to whatever country they were studying the government of. She was still completing her training as a War Dog, but to this day she still went after her mentors for extensive reading lists about various countries.

Nakia had boundless energy, too. T’Challa would never forget how Nakia had sat beside her in the library café one afternoon, bearing two glasses of cold mango juice, and told her, “Mind if I read here for a bit, Princess T’Challa? You have a calming presence, and I need to concentrate.”

Then they had silently sat together for five hours, doing coursework, occasionally getting up for treats and to complain to each other.

Nakia always insisted that that was their first date, to T’Challa’s vast amusement.

There had been others soon after. The two of them rambling through the market stalls, trying out each other’s favourite foods. Going to braiding salons together, Nakia helpfully putting in a suggestion for T’Challa’s attachments. Shopping for books together. Going to a mall together, T’Challa helping Nakia choose a shade of lippie, and afterwards T’Challa gleefully purchasing more pairs of sandals than she could possibly need whilst Nakia laughed and egged her on. And, on one very recent but memorable occasion, sidling into a sex shop together, where T’Challa, feeling very warm on the cheeks, stuttered out approving comments as Nakia shopped for a strap-on.

Being with Nakia always felt like T’Challa could be content just _being_. Just living the moments with Nakia, enjoying her company, not in any hurry to step out of the bounds of their bubble.

Bast. She really ought to get up and finish preparing for the trip.

T’Challa sleepily nuzzled Nakia’s forehead.

After a while, Nakia said, “But my point still stands.” She had her gangly limbs wrapped around T’Challa, like a very persistent octopus. T’Challa loved it. “So then. We are both beautiful, as it turns out. Perhaps we’re one of the most beautiful couples to ever walk Wakanda.”

*

Perhaps they were.

But the idea of beauty had never fully crystalised in T’Challa’s mind until she stepped off the aeroplane the next day with Baba.

Beauty had always been a simple fact about someone. A happy, lucky fact to add to the list a person had about themselves, like name or eye colour or aversion to certain fruits.

At home, in Wakanda, T’Challa was always weighed with the expectation to do well. _Will the crown princess be capable of governing and protecting us well?_ the headlines tooted the day she graduated. _The public library and the national university have copies of Princess T’Challa’s undergraduate thesis on…_.

In retrospect, growing up in Wakanda had always been about parents introducing their child and proudly saying: _my child is skilled in this particular endeavor._ W’Kabi’s parents were like that with his rhinos and his eye for textile business. Nakia’s parents were so pleased about her combat skills. Zuri gushed about his nephew’s decorative metalwork.

And so T’Challa was bewildered when she saw the first foreign coverage about her, at the end of the summit’s first day.

It was focused on her hair.

Wondering how it was all put together, how she washed it, if she washed it, if she combed it, if all those braids ever felt heavy piled on her head, and so on.

The next day T’Challa delivered her first foreign speech. She spoke about Wakanda’s first few steps into the international arena.

She had expected some criticism on her diplomacy, for it was always the first criticism she received in Wakanda. T’Challa had never made it a secret how diplomacy made her impatient. She’d always believed that two people in a room could accomplish more, and in less time, than a hundred people trying to please everyone all at once.

But the criticism she received, first from the British press swiftly followed by the French and German and American ones, all said the same thing: T’Challa was “an exceedingly pretty princess”, but was she “humble”?

She caught the words “snobbish and smug princess” in one of the articles, and somehow the word “princess” sounded different from how Nakia and everyone back home said it.

Then there were the articles with close-up pictures of her face as she delivered her speech, but they were about how she was wearing no make-up. Was the princess of Wakanda making a feminist statement? An anti-make up statement? Anti-capitalist statement? What were the make-up brands in Africa? What was her secret for still looking fresh-faced and stunning even without make-up?

“Whatever has this got to do with the summit?” T’Challa ranted at Baba.

“These people,” Baba said, “they take their time to get to the meat of things.” He reached out over the breakfast table and gently squeezed T’Challa’s hand. “Have you ever seen an American red carpet coverage? It is always how they open events before the awards and speeches.”

T’Challa went around Wakanda without make-up, had spoken in front of crowds without make-up, like so many others. And it was simply because she had a habit of biting and licking her lips. A habit that she had, for the most part, trained herself out of.

For weeks T’Challa wondered about the relation of being humble to the simple fact of being beautiful.

A few years later, Nakia told her.

Nakia had just returned home from a mission across the Atlantic. They were lounging in a palace garden, T’Challa lying on the grass, Nakia tracing feather-light patterns on T’Challa’s forehead, the lemon tree a citrusy canopy above them.

“I think beauty is a requirement, outside home,” Nakia said. “Especially for women. If she is beautiful, it’s like she has accomplished most of her life goals. She is now a beautiful woman, the end. But she must be nice, and good, and kind.”

“She has to be humble.” T’Challa paused, wondering. “It sounds like because she is beautiful, she cannot be anything else. Anything else messy. Anything else human.”

“Exactly.”

“That makes no sense.”

Nakia traced T’Challa’s eyebrows. “Have you heard of their fairy tales? The evil beautiful queen is now ruling the kingdom, through some treachery or other. Maybe her husband the king died. Maybe she killed him. Often she’s too ambitious, too proud, too aware of her own beauty. The heroine, younger and more beautiful and so very good and modest that she doesn’t even know she’s beautiful, will triumph over the evil queen. The end.”

“Triumph how?” T’Challa had seen some remakes in foreign movies, but she often forgot how they ended.

Nakia shrugged. “Because she has a heart of gold? You know, I don’t remember.”

They gave each other high-fives. Both of them were often only casual fans of stories, of novels and movies and shows, unlike Baba who could remember all the details of his favourite movies and Mother who could say lots of intelligent things about themes and character arcs.

“The moral of the story,” T’Challa said, with a wry twist of her mouth, “beauty can be threatening.”

“And it should never be,” laughed Nakia.

*

T’Challa wakes with a jolt.

Her chest is thudding. Nakia’s laughter floats in her ears.

For a moment, T’Challa is disoriented by the strangeness of the ceiling. It is a spot she is unfamiliar with. It is still painted with the pale grey of early morning, with a hint of the glowing blue of a plasma partition –

Then she remembers why her chest is still wildly thudding.

T’Challa carefully shifts on her bed, and peers past the partition. A stretch of intricately tiled floor separates her from the bottom of the steps. Three steps up, and there is the queen’s curtained bed.

When she was the queen T’Challa always shut the lace curtains when she slept, and she never had anyone inside the bedchamber with her before she woke up.

But now the curtains are always open. From this angle, T’Challa can see the rigid plane of the made covers, the neat stack of smoothened pillows.

Her cousin is already by the balcony.

It has been a week since that luncheon when Killmonger drilled into the council that T’Challa is a hostage. Attempt to kill the new queen and they might as well kill T’Challa. She has had some time since then to collect her thoughts, to attempt to reign in the roiling turmoil in her, and what T’Challa has thought of did not settle her that much. After all, the faded hope of Shuri’s and Nakia’s safety rests on the fact that Killmonger told her the truth: that they are safe, that they are alive.

T’Challa does not know much. She knows very little, in fact, try as she might. Killmonger has been keeping her in the dark.

What T’Challa does know is almost inconsequential.

She shifts her eyes from across the made bed, to the open doors of the balcony.

Every day of this week, T’Challa has noted that Killmonger wakes just mere moments before the sunrise. Her cousin will put on a loose shirt, covering the numerous raised scars on her body, before opening the balcony doors. She will watch the sunrise for exactly two minutes. And all the while, Killmonger will be standing just inside the threshold, on the thinnest shadows of the bedchamber only a hair’s breadth from the spilling sunrise.

Killmonger is there now. T’Challa can only see her shadowy back, spine rigid, limned by the mellow gold of sunrise.

T’Challa knows all of this because she has not been sleeping well for the past week. That night after the luncheon, she lay awake all night and watched with tired, fascinated eyes as her cousin woke up and briskly made the queen’s bed.

T’Challa had never seen a bed made before. She had never made a bed in her life.

Two minutes must be over. Killmonger is turning away from the balcony.

T’Challa quickly climbs out of her bed, so that she is on her feet by the time her cousin reaches her. Being eye to eye with the queen is a flimsy shield, but a shield all the same.

“Rise and shine,” Killmonger says, punching in the code. The plasma partition melts away. “Breakfast with me.”

She is so very tired. It feels like the last true rest she has had was the day before she flew with Baba to Vienna, weeks ago.

“No different from the other days, then.” T’Challa adds, “Your Highness.”

Yesterday must have been a good day with the council, because Killmonger only quirks her eyebrow. “Lippy. Well as long as you ain’t treasonous.”

*

Just as it takes exactly two minutes for Killmonger to watch the sunrise, breakfast takes exactly thirty minutes. T’Challa suspects that it might have been shorter if they were not sharing the same godforsaken spoon.

This morning they are sharing a bowl of –

T’Challa frowns. Blearily squints at the food. “What is this?”

“Shrimp fried rice,” her cousin says in brisk tones. “Just eat the damn thing.”

And T’Challa does. It is not as if she has any other choice. She eats what the queen eats, drinks what the queen drinks.

T’Challa eats the first spoonful under Killmonger’s keen gaze. They wait for some moments. Her cousin puts in her ear buds, listening to whatever book or document that, most likely, she does not wish for T’Challa to see.

Meanwhile, T’Challa looks around the breakfast room.

It is a smaller chamber than the dining hall. A tall blue vase sits on the centre of the table, full of flowers brought in from the garden every morning. Even when they had guests, only the family attend breakfast here: Baba with his cocoa, Mother with her chopped fresh melons, Shuri talking animatedly about last night’s lab tests as she had second helpings of everything.

Now there are only T’Challa and Killmonger.

Even T’Challa’s wrist feels naked, without her kimoyo beads.

This is T’Challa’s home, but it is as if it has been yanked and tilted at a sharp angle.

When she was the queen, even when she was still the crown princess, T’Challa’s days were also regimented. Each day was mapped out with activities blocked out in specific times.

But it never felt this cold. It never felt this – this impersonal, this institutionalised, even in her university days. Always there was Mother’s soothing palm cupping T’Challa’s cheek. There were Shuri’s cackle and jokes peppering the regimented days, just a kimoyo bead away. There was Baba’s guiding voice, then seemingly as constant as Wakanda is. And in university there were the warm smiles of Nakia and W’Kabi and Okoye, and other friends, as familiar and comforting as T’Challa’s favourite pillow back in the palace.

T’Challa wonders if Killmonger looks at the breakfast room, at the sunrise, and thinks of this as home.

But T’Challa only wonders briefly. A crushing swirl of sorrow, dislike, guilt, and indignity always follow whenever she wonders of such things, and she is much too tired, her soul much too heavy and her mind too foggy for that right now.

She eats another spoonful. The silver tastes vaguely of coffee.

Her cousin does love coffee.

It is perhaps the only good thing in this situation. T’Challa may be sleepless, but Killmonger’s near obsession with coffee keeps T’Challa from keeling over.

She reaches for their shared cup, notes where her cousin has sipped.

The coffee is too strong. Too bitter doused with too much sugar, with only a thimbleful of milk. From behind the cup and beneath her lashes, T’Challa glances at Killmonger.

The queen is already watching her.

T’Challa does not let her own gaze skitter away. She lowers the cup, meets her cousin’s eyes squarely.

“May I attend today’s council assembly, Your Highness?”

Killmonger removes an ear bud. She taps the table, still watching T’Challa. “What makes you think today’s any different?”

“I do not.”

“But you still asked. Finish the last spoon.”

T’Challa does so.

“You look dead tired, don’t you, Coz?” Killmonger says with an indifferent expression. She has not displayed such intense anger towards T’Challa in days, unlike the day they first met. The closest thing to it was Killmonger snapping shut the jewellery case with more force than what was necessary, and not choosing anything from it.

Now, more often than not, Killmonger looks at T’Challa with a cold scrutiny.

But T’Challa sees the way her cousin’s fingers tap on any surface, the way they twitch, as if at any moment they will clench into a fist. And she knows that the rage is only lurking just beneath the surface. That Killmonger is only wearing a mask.

“I am tired,” admits T’Challa.

“A blind man can see it. You’re not fit to attend council meetings. So I’ve got just the thing for you.”

T’Challa hopes it is not anything inane or nefarious. “May I choose not to? I would sooner rest. Your Highness. I am tired.”

“You will choose to.”

This is torture, says the dull throb in T’Challa’s temple. She is torturing me.

“Are you listening?”

“I always am. Your Highness.”

A corner of Killmonger’s lips tip up. “That’s good to know. Anyway. Listen. You’ll stay inside the partition today –”

Like all the days of this past week.

“ – and when I return at five, you will tell me all about the tribes’ leading families. All five tribes. The complete genealogies. All the branches and distant cousins and offshoots and shit. Be ready at five sharp.”

T’Challa quickly runs through her mind what she knows of her cousin’s routine. Five sharp, before supper at seven-thirty sharp. It is gym time.

“But Your Highness can read all of this in a book,” T’Challa says.

“Already finished it. A couple of days ago.” Killmonger grabs the cup and drinks the last of the coffee. “I just like employing all methods of learning, is all. How did you think I made it here?”


End file.
